OMG sooooo tired. I was just zooming along fine about forty five minutes ago and then sleepy time hit me like a ton of bricks.I'm gonna make this pretty darn short - but wanted to keep you abreast of progress over at Peckerwood (T.H.F.K.A.S.B.)

We spent yesterday running errands and getting supplies in Fort Wayne. We hit the Home Depot blowout again - but the place is pretty much stripped to the bone - no big bargain surprises. In the process of our various stops also at Lowes and Minards, though we bought a bunch of panelling and other stuff so that we could keep moving ahead. We also had to pick up supplies for the graduation event we're having on Sunday in the lobby. Rose (from the Visitor's Center) is having her daughter's graduation party in the Lobby. So we hit Sams Club and a bunch of other places to get the supplies we'll need to keep 75 people fed and watered. It's like a cake-a-palooza, this event. I've gotta get like sixty three cakes ready for them by Sunday.

I swear by the time we get drywall loaded ON to the truck at the lumber supply store, then we get it OFF the truck and INTO the house...I'm already ready to call it a day. The ten foot stuff particularly is very heavy. We're using the ten foot stuff right now (vs. the 8 foot sheets) because it means less cutting and piecing together. You SHOULD run the stuff horizontally (opposite the direction of the studs) if you are being a really good little builder - but Bob says it really ain't that big of a deal - and sometimes it's a whole lot quicker to just be able to prop it against the floor and screw it in.

Rich worked mostly in the kitchen today and I was busy like a beaver so I didn't get a lot of pics. He was building the utility closet which houses the water heater in the kitchen. He got the studs up and the panelling in a couple hours - and it's going to work quite nicely, I think. He thinks by the end of tomorrow we'll be able to call the kitchen 'ready to paint'. Of course, that all depends upon the ceiling going up as planned... so stay tuned. It'll be the first time we try out Larry's home-made drywall lift. So it's bound to be worth some laughs. Our incompetence, I mean - not Larry's contraption.

I had a 'grrrr' moment today. There is a piece of music I need for the WWII show called "We'll have a hot time in the town of berlin when the yanks go marching in". Nice tune. Anyway - the sheet music was NOT easy to find - and LUCKILY it existed in this anthology called "I'll be Seeing you - 50 songs of World War II". Sounds good right. Well it is. In fact - if I'd found that book a few months ago I would have saved myself a lot of photocopying in NY and some serious online detective work. Not EVERYTHING is in there - but a lot of it is. So anyway - I had ordered this book a few days ago second-hand on Amazon because when i checked the listing it had "Hot time in the old town blah blah" in the song list. It arrives today. IT'S NOT THERE. I double check like ten times on the contents list cconvinced I'm missing it... Cuz I KNOW it was listed online. I go back online...look up the book. And I realize that there is a second edition with the EXACT same title and cover. Except now it's called....and i'm not making this up "I'll Be Seeing You - Fifty ONE songs of World War Two". Seriously... the ONE song I need...not in the edition I bought. ARghgggh. Anyway - it's a lovely book with a great introduction/forward thing that will be very handy - and I like having these songs in a book form anyhoo. So I found the stupid song on ebay and ordered it. It's amazing how much vintage sheet music you can find on there... Almost every time I've gotten stuck, I've tracked down an out of print song on ebay and gotten the original 40's sheet music (that looks SOO cool) for only a couple dollars. So.

My first task over at Peckerwood was to subfloor the bathroom. it's a really small room which should be a dawdle to do...except the shower stall is already...well IN-stalled. And its this corner unit thing with bizarre angles. AND the walls aren't square. AND the floor isn't square or perfectly level. Sooo it was quite the challenge. It actually took two attempts which REALLY peeved me... The first time i wasn't really too far off, but the floor didn't run snug enough along the shower stall edge - and floor leveller probably isn't a good thing to use as filler there because of the moisture. So I did it again. It was just impossible to do it from measurements alone - so I grabbed a cardboard box and made one of my little cardboard angle template thingies (like I used to do the triangle ceiling things in our kitchen). Success.

CUTTING CORNERS

Ta da. On to the next thing. Pack Leader said I could start sheet rocking the hallway. The tricky thing is that there wasn't anywhere to really lay down the sheet rock flat on the floor... and when you're cutting ten foot long lines it's a whole lot easier to put your metal ruler on the floor, hold it with one hand and brace the other end with your knee and cut. Gravity does not make cutting drywall a simple task. And we had it all stacked up in a little hallway cuz there wasn't really anywhere else to go. So - it was frustrating - but I managed. At the same time Rich managed to fall off of a ladder - but he's ok. Of course, he could be legally dead and he would still say he's OK but I'm scouting him out for a limp when he doesn't realize I'm looking - and I think he survived pretty unscathed.

So by the end of the evening I managed to get the hallway all faced with sheetrock - which actually in itself was pretty good for a JoJo's day's work. The drywall isn't all screwed in yet... I'll do that next. But I got all of it cut, pieced and up in the air and attached. Poor Rich had to stop what he was doing every ten minutes to help me lug the stuff around and screw it in. But at least the place is now starting to look like an actual house. Rather than a crack den. Ok it still looks like a crack den. And before you TELL ME - there's one little piece up at the top that needs trimmed before it gets screwed down cuz it's bowed out a bit and not laying flat against the studs. Again - the floor is slanty so it's a challenge.

HALL-IN' ASS.

And, please note, that on the wall to the right of me... that wall has FOUR outlet holes. See - if you have one outlet hole and you misjudge where it is by a little, you can fudge it by shoving the drywall left and right and throwing some extra joint compound around. If there are LIKE FOURRRR outlet holes to make, things get a whole lot more dangerous. I'm getting better at it. I've discovered a short cut which helps a whole lot - once I've measured the x and y coordinates for where the hole has to be, I get one of the blue electrical boxy things that you have to cut around. I grab one that hasn't been attached yet and then trace around it on the drywall and use that to make sure my hole is big enough. The sucky thing is that you have to make sure your hole is BIG enough that the box slides through inside your hole (or it will crack your drywall) AND you have to make sure it's SMALL enough still that the outlet cover masks the hole. This is easy for a perfessional. It is not easy for a me.

I was thinking maybe the actors would like to sleep under the stars...y'know? I'm sure they're all outdoorsy.

The Mayor, his lovely wife and Chief Operations honcho Ruth brought some folks from Indianapolis over to see the Lobby this morning. Ruth, who had been at the economic event a few days ago was SO relieved to see the sconce was straight again. See... people NOTICE these things. I'm not crazy. Ok, I AM crazy - but they notice anyway.

Dillon has requested that I be job reference for him for an application to work somewhere in Fort Wayne. It's called Boudoir Noir and apparently deals in the more alluring aspects of the clothing and toy businesses. I'm not sure I'm infinitely qualified to know whether one has what it takes to make it in that particular line of work. But I shall do my best. He's a great person and I'm sure he can blow with the best of them... sex dolls I mean... blow up sex dolls. yeesh. It's actually not a bad job for an aspiring actor... you'll get to observe some pretty nifty human behavior.